Politics
PDP Women Leader Tasks Secondus On Diaspora Chapters
The Women Leader, Johannesburg, South Africa chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mrs Olufunke Agbola, has urged the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to give the Diaspora chapters opportunity to contribute to its growth.
Agbola, in a telephone interview from Johannesburg last Tuesday stated that Diaspora chapters could contribute to the party’s fortunes in the 2019 general elections.
She said that the chapter had written a letter to Prince Uche Secondus, the party’s National Chairman on giving the Diaspora chapter a sense of belonging.
“The PDP in the Diaspora is one child that must not be ignored or considered as stillborn because we are very solid on the ground.
“Our roles in branding and re-branding our great party continentally and worldwide cannot go unnoticed. We are candidly seeking for the national body’s recognition which we so well deserve,’’ she said.
Agbola said that Secondus was in a proper position to implement the gesture since he belonged to a new and younger generation of the party’s leadership.
“The reasons for this request is because among the Diaspora PDP family are young politicians, technocrats, and professionals in every field of endeavour whose yearnings for a better Nigeria is like nature’s mark that cannot be erased.
“These men and women are ready and willing and able to sacrifice their juicy and lucrative businesses and jobs to get fully involved in the rebuilding of our fatherland, if the opportunity is granted,’’ Agbola said.
The women leader called for the amendment of the party’s constitution to accommodate Diaspora members and chapters in the affairs of the party.
She appealed to Secondus to make the party the first to adopt such convention in its activities.
According to Agbola, PDP is the party that planted democracy seed in the country and will be historical to evolve new democratic reforms.
“Democratic reforms will see the kind of analog politicians and politicking we have today in the country become history.
“It will further make Nigeria the first African democracy to walk the lines of the conventional European Democratic trends where youths have taken leadership in countries like France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria,’’ she said.
Agbola said the party’s members in South Africa were solidly behind Secondus and assured that members would lend assistance when called upon.
“The key thing is that we can do better collectively than divisively apart,’’ she added.
Prof. Amupitan gave the warning on Saturday, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, during the South-South Zonal Readiness Assessment and Interactive Staff Engagement organised ahead of the 2027 general elections.
He said insecurity remained a potential challenge to the electoral process but stressed that the Commission would not allow threats against its personnel to undermine its constitutional responsibilities.
“Insecurity may pose a challenge, but our collective constitutional resolve is far stronger. Let me again send a clear message from Port Harcourt: anyone who attempts to threaten, intimidate, or harm our ad-hoc staff, NYSC members, or permanent personnel will be brought to justice under the full weight of the law,” he said.
The INEC Chairman, who was accompanied by National Commissioners, directors and technical aides, disclosed that the South-South engagement was the fifth in a series of zonal assessments, following similar exercises in the South-West, North-West, South-East and North-East.
He explained that his physical presence across the geopolitical zones reflected the Commission’s field-first approach, emphasising that electoral integrity must be established through effective operations at the grassroots.
According to him, the assessment would cover operational preparedness across the 123 Local Government Areas in the six South-South states.
On election security, Prof. Amupitan said INEC had moved away from reactive security arrangements traditionally activated around election day to a proactive, intelligence-driven framework known as the “ICCES Tentacle”.
He explained that the framework was designed to extend inter-agency security coordination from national and state headquarters to local government areas and Registration Area Centres, including remote communities.
He identified three critical pillars of the framework as mapping and mitigating security threats, protecting electoral personnel and infrastructure, and guaranteeing safe access to polling units.
The INEC boss said the security arrangement would provide comprehensive protection for electoral personnel, technological infrastructure, including Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices and server infrastructure, as well as voters.
He added that the framework was intended to ensure that every polling unit, irrespective of its geographical location or history of security challenges, remained safe and accessible for the exercise of democratic rights.
Prof. Amupitan disclosed that the South-South security architecture comprised approximately 60 major operational formations, headquarters and state commands operating under the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES).
The network, he said, brings together military, naval, air, police and other security and intelligence agencies across the six states.
“Together, this integrated multi-agency network represents the operational backbone that guarantees intelligence-led protection across every riverine creek, coastal axis, and land-based polling unit in the Niger Delta,” he stated.
Providing an overview of the region’s electoral significance, the INEC Chairman said the South-South had the fourth-largest voting bloc in the country, with 15,823,550 registered voters, representing 15.30 per cent of the national register.
Rivers State alone, he said, accounts for 3,736,434 registered voters spread across the 23 local government areas.
Alhaji Abubakar made the demand following revelations that some INEC registration officers allegedly abused their access to the voter registration system to introduce irregular records into the database.
In a statement issued by his Director of Strategic Communications, Mr Phrank Shaibu, the former vice-president described the development as a serious breach of the Commission’s internal safeguards and raised concerns about the integrity of the electoral process.
He urged INEC to identify the officials implicated in the alleged misconduct and explain what disciplinary or legal measures had been taken against them.
Alhaji Abubakar also called for an independent forensic audit of the preliminary voters’ register to establish the scale of the alleged manipulation, identify affected records and determine how the questionable entries were introduced into the system.
He further insisted that INEC preserve all relevant voter records, image files, system access logs and electronic audit trails to prevent the destruction or alteration of evidence before an independent examination could be conducted.
The former vice-president also demanded that the Commission disclose the identities of companies contracted to produce sensitive election materials ahead of the 2027 polls, arguing that transparency was essential to building public confidence in the electoral process.
INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology, Dr Lawrence Bayode, had earlier disclosed during a television interview that some registration officers across the country allegedly used their official login credentials to introduce irregularities into the voters’ database.
Dr Bayode explained that the Commission’s Automated Biometric Identification System helped identify questionable records and establish how some irregularities entered the system.
He, however, clarified that not all suspicious photographs were AI-generated, as some resulted from poor registration procedures.
The development followed public concerns over suspected AI-generated photographs, alleged duplicate entries and other inconsistencies discovered in the preliminary voters’ register published online on October 26, 2026.
INEC has maintained that the published document is a preliminary register and that it is reviewing questionable records ahead of the certification of the final Register of Voters.
The controversy has intensified calls for greater transparency and accountability in the management of the voters’ register as preparations gather momentum for the 2027 general elections.
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